Conventionally, printers have input trays for feeding print medium, also called print material, or print media, to a printer and output trays for receiving print medium from the printer. These input and output trays are often called cassettes. Typically, a printer may have several input trays including an input tray for 81/2.times.11-inch print medium, 81/2.times.14-inch print medium, and a tray to accommodate business size envelopes. In use, an operator must remove the currently employed cassette and insert the new cassette each time print material of a different dimension is fed to the printer. This system of numerous input cassettes resulted in added expense to the operator who was required to purchase a cassette for each size print material used. The numerous input cassette system also required ample storage space for storing the extra input cassettes during nonuse. Additionally, the system resulted in operator inefficiency in that the operator was required to repeatedly remove and insert different sized input cassettes.
To increase efficiency, input trays were developed having an adjustable wall such that a single input tray would accommodate various sized print material for feed to a printer. Copiers were manufactured with adjustable guide rails such that the feed area of the copier could be adjusted for the input of various sized print material. This design of an adjustable input tray or input feed area resulted in improved operator efficiency and a lower manufacturing cost over the multiple input tray design. However, in the adjustable input tray design, as the input tray size was adjusted, the output tray dimensions were unchanged.
In printers that use a wet ink printing process, freshly printed ink on print material must be given sufficient time to dry before a second sheet of print material is fed from the printer onto the top of the freshly printed material. If the ink is not dry, it will be smeared by the sheet placed on top of the still wet sheet. In response, printer output trays were designed with wings extending inwardly from each side of the output tray. In operation, a freshly printed sheet is fed from the printer onto the wings. The sheet is held on the wings for a sufficient time such that the sheet below is allowed time to dry. After a sufficient time has elapsed, the wings retract allowing the sheet to fall onto the sheet below. After a sheet has been allowed to fall off the wings, the wings are moved up into the engaged position and the printer output feeds another sheet onto the wings, thereby repeating the process.
Due to the various sizes of print material, the wings were made relatively wide such that wings of the fixed dimension output trays could support various sized print material. This wide wing design required the wings to be fully retracted before a wide sheet of print material could fall into the output tray. For typical pivoting type wings, the output tray was required to have a sufficient depth such that the output tray could hold a stack of output print material while still allowing sufficient space for the wide wing to pivot downwardly without contacting the stack of print material held in the output tray. In another wing design, the wings are mounted on the floor of the output tray and retract upwardly toward the top on the output tray. The wide wing must be fully retracted toward the output tray side wall before wide sheets of print material can fall into the output tray. Such a wing design is described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,728,963, to Rasmussen et al., entitled "Single Sheet Ink-Jet Printer With Passive Drying System". Additionally, the wide wing design required a relatively large amount of raw material to manufacture the wing, and therefore increased the costs of such output trays. Furthermore, the wide wing design required that both wings be moveable to allow a freshly printed sheet to fall into the output tray.